Breaking with heritage to revive human values

The actions of humans are typically influenced by societal norms and mainstream trends that are passed down from generation to generation, shaping our life choices and behavioural patterns. 

Jean-Paul Close, founder of the STIR Foundation and AiREAS, experienced the breaking of heritage and the revival of core human values first-hand, after he chose to resign from an international executive job at a multinational company to stay close to his children. In his recent publications, he reflects on the voluntary shift towards ethical choices and sustainable development, using his personal experience and the transformation of a European city as examples.

Read the original article:  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41606-4_4

Read more in Research Features

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Research Pod! Thank you for listening and joining us today. 

In this episode we look at the work of Jean-Paul Close, founder and researcher at the STIR Foundation and AiREAS. These initiatives strive to demonstrate how human progress is based on breaking points from our cultural heritage, turning old, mainstream behaviour into new patterns. This is also key to tackling today’s environmental and social challenges where humans and their organisations will need to learn to make more ethical choices based on key existential sustainability issues. 

After many decades, even centuries, of focusing on economic growth at the expense of natural environments and core human values, humanity has hit a brick wall and is being forced to make important changes geared towards its own sustainable existence. Yet, human evolution is a gradual and non-linear process, typically marked by personal and societal disruptions that prompt us to take a new direction. 

The actions of humans are typically influenced by societal norms and mainstream trends that are passed down from generation to generation, shaping our life choices and behavioural patterns. Thus, breaking with such heritage and changing behavioural patterns in a voluntary way is far from an easy process. This often entails going through periods of crisis, recessions, wars, and other societal disruptions first. 

Jean-Paul Close experienced the breaking of heritage and the revival of core human values first-hand, after he chose to resign from an international executive job at a multinational company to stay close to his children. In his recent publications, he reflects on the voluntary shift towards ethical choices and sustainable development, using his personal experience and the transformation of a European city as examples. 

In 1996, when he was 38 years old and working as an expat executive at a large multinational company in Spain, Close was forced to make a life-changing decision. His company asked him to move to the Far East to advance his career, but he had recently become the father of a girl child and split up with his partner at the time. 

This forced him to decide whether to move away from his child to pursue further professional advancement in his field or leave his job entirely, stay in Spain, and prioritise his fatherhood. Son of an executive who often travelled for work, Close had so far lived his life following his father’s example and societal expectations at the time. 

Yet, this time, he decided to remain close to his daughter and quit his job, a decision that deeply impacted his life and prompted him to re-assess his choices thus far. This shift in priorities was the first step on his journey towards discovering his authentic self, reaching beyond the dogmas, beliefs, and implicit rules that he had been following. 

A few years after he had left his executive job, Close met his partner, with whom he had his second child. The couple decided to move to the Netherlands, where they encountered significant societal challenges and eventually ended their marriage. Once again taking on the role of a single father, Close was forced to choose, this time between his own authenticity and abiding by societal norms that did not align with his personal values.

He had left the Netherlands as a teenager and returned 27 years later to find it changed, fully driven by money and bureaucratic controls. Instead of leaving the country after his second divorce, he decided to stay and develop a new vision of society. This vision prioritises the sustainable wellbeing of individuals and society as a shared responsibility, including the protection and cooperation with      natural environments. 

With this mission, he established the STIR foundation in 2009, a few months after the banking crisis had upset the world and our trust in money. One year later, he co-founded AiREAS, a cooperative association that connects citizens, government agencies, entrepreneurs, and scientists, inviting them to collectively work together towards developing and sustaining a set of core essential natural human values, such as integral health and air quality, at a regional level. 

The STIR foundation and AiREAS introduced numerous initiatives designed to facilitate a much-needed shift towards prioritising sustainable development and the revival of core human values.      This includes an initiative, called ‘Cities of Tomorrow’, aimed at enhancing the ability of urban environments to preserve people’s engagement into their own wellbeing and authenticity, while also improving the integral quality of local life. 

Through experimentation and engagement, Close gradually introduced a new narrative of a healthy society, based on co-creation and group commitment, which he called ‘sustainocracy’. This vision entails the establishment of a real-time democracy centred around shared human responsibilities and core human values, which prioritises the social needs, health, and safety of citizens over economic and political interests. 

In his recent work, Close offers an example of how the breaking of heritage also occurs in urban or regional settings, focusing his arguments on the development of Eindhoven, the fifth-largest city in the Netherlands, located in the south-eastern part of the country. 

Situated between various financial centres in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, for many years, Eindhoven served as a crossroad and struggled to retain its historical identity. The rapid industrial development from the 1850s onwards brought significant and uncontrolled growth to the city. After one hundred years, with the relatively sudden disappearance of leading industries from its territories, due to different macro-economic reasons, the city was forced to define its own contextual authentic identity and attractiveness. This ultimately culminated in its establishment as a centre for technology, design, and knowledge. As such, in the late-1990s, the city became known as ‘Brainport Eindhoven’, a name that highlights its technological and scientific contributions. 

Around 2010, influenced by the experimental initiatives of Close, the city started undergoing a further transition, aimed at improving the health of its inhabitants and their environment. Due to its unique historic breaking point with its heritage, Eindhoven is a great example of how urban settings can gradually evolve and shift towards a more ethical, existential and sustainable development. In the process, the city has to manoeuvre between the complex tension of two mainstream realities that appeared – the old one based on financial growth, and the new one of developing a healthy ecosystem together with all the societal participants – the sustainocracy.

Through his personal experiences, Close gathered valuable insight into the intricate underpinnings of human evolution and the shift towards an authentic and deeply fulfilling existence.      

His hope is that, by sharing such insights, methods and experiences, humanity will gradually let go of the old heritage that emphasises economic growth. Developing regional breaking points by building and networking societies characterised by essential natural human values, shared responsibility, heightened awareness, and meaningful collaborative efforts, we can aim to contribute to the sustainable evolution of societies and humankind.

That’s all for this episode – thanks for listening. Links to the original research can be found in the shownotes for this episode. And don’t forget to stay subscribed to Research Pod for more of the latest science! 

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